I think for every word spoken, at least two words get thought. Probably more. Some scientist somewhere probably knows.
If you know me or ever just caught a broadcast of the sports I commentate, that notion should paint a pretty clear picture of the inside of my head. It’s a busy place.
I’m known for talking, but I think in order to be a talker—at least one that hasn’t been run out of sports television—you have to first be a bit of a thinker. Probably a quick one. I wouldn’t mistake quantity for quality though.
It takes me time to synthesize things to arrive at a well-conceived opinion. That’s problematic, then, when your job is to speak into a microphone about rapidly-unfolding events. As reticent as I am to form a strong stance on an issue until I have had time to reflect on it, for some reason, I’m willing to verbalize my analyses in an instant watching the sports I know. But I almost never watch any of my shows after the fact. Besides hating the sound of my voice on TV, the time and space to reflect on and critique myself and all the possibly better things I could’ve said instead of what I did say, is a torturous exercise. I’ve learned to steer clear.
Ahead of my final biathlon broadcast in what was a disjointed broadcast winter, I was classic skiing alone yesterday with my thoughts. I noticed they were clear. And slow. And calm.
It made me think about all the hours I’ve spent inside my own head while training. It suddenly struck me as more valuable than maybe I’d realized. I paused in the woods, spring sun shining and reflecting off the snow in the Finnish forest, and I felt an amazing sense of calm. It felt like reading a good book—something I do precious little of.
Still, thinking and talking are my realm. Never have they been affected over my lifetime as drastically as in the last year. Face-to-face interaction is different from screen time with people, and yesterday highlighted that it changes the way I form thoughts and how I talk, even if it’s just a little bit.
I normally have many an outlet for all those thoughts banging around wildly in there. Being here, I’ve got a nation of introverted people around me, who speak quite a complicated language I still can’t speak. Before Covid, my daily, face-to-face interaction beyond the four walls of our family abode was extensive. Today, it almost doesn’t exist, and wouldn't be much more robust, even if we were still in Duluth, but certainly here in Finland, it has curtailed more. Still, I have writing and the TV work, and now a podcast. But those aren’t really conversation.
Working with, Chris, a former athlete I coached who prodded me towards the podcast project, has recently dredged up stories and memories of my communication style. I text and email extensively as a coach. I do this I think because of what I say above—writing gives me some time to form thoughts more thoroughly. But just as much as fear of maybe saying the wrong THING while speaking, email often misses TONE, and can feel way longer than a spoken conversation. He recalled for me recently how one of his teammates pulled up an email I sent to my team years ago—how long it was—and apparently how he'd exclaimed to his teammates, it hurt his eyes. Indeed. How embarrassing. I’m lucky TV work actually rewards these oddities in human behavior. Otherwise I might be just a sad, aging man tapping out extremely long messages on electronic devices that just end up out in the ether.
Like most of us, these lock downs and distancing draw me ever more to my devices. I sense that’s fairly common and I’m far from alone. And I think it’s kind of bad, even though there’s clearly some good in it.
To keep the stoke high, let’s start with the good. Communication is the essence of humanity. The level to which we communicate sets us apart from every other living thing. If you consider human history, almost every technology created, works in some way to support and advance human communication. Whatever we enjoy most about life is likely possible today compared to a each previous generation, due to advances in communication. We are living in Finland—heck, the reason Mimmu and I even met—because of modern advances in human communication. We all continue to operate at the apex of communication, and that apex keeps moving, and it’s moving fast.
It has come to a point in which I write these blogs in the spaces between duties as an employee, father, and husband, tapping them out on a device I carry with me like my grandpa carried a comb. I send them essentially from anywhere, to a space I’ve bought somewhere, that I can’t conceptualize, and I edit and repost usually on another device (but I can do that all on my comb too), that then ends up on a virtual space that pings you for me when I’ve dropped something there for you to read at your convenience. Think about that a few moments. Imagine explaining that to Thomas Jefferson.
We are adjusting how we live and feel about ourselves, what we buy, what we follow and what we are interested in, almost entirely off of developments in communication. We are defining ourselves and our value to society against what we see others doing. That’s always been the case. But in Parkville, MN, at 12 years old, I compared it to maybe 40-50 other kids I saw in school, not a steady stream of imagery and advertising hitting the comb I carry around in my pocket and constantly look at, about millions of other people and what they're doing. That’s kind of scary as rabbit holes go. Analysis of our personal capital in the world is now derived from algorithms that place us in a mega stream of information, the implications of which we can’t possibly wrap our minds around nor anticipate in the future. It’s not even a secret. And we. Can’t. Stop. I think that’s it. That’s what feels a little bit dark to me.
Some of the worst things in human nature—pride and vanity, to start—is not only on full display as a common value in this mega stream, but are being used to direct our actions—to manipulate our emotions, not just so we do, but so we FEEL, because how we feel directs what we do. Because THAT is valuable to this communication machine. We are being conditioned to It. No, we ARE conditioned to it. And it’s making people buzz and feel great for some instances, while simultaneously making people feel miserable—inadequate. We are the commodity, and we as humans are fascinated if not fixated on the notoriety possible in all of it. Nobody any less so than yours truly. I am playing that game right now. It has pidgeon-holed me into a place in which what I have to say becomes a commodity. And I enjoy that. Most of us do. We feel valuable from it. That’s why we’re all on these damn devices. Let’s not fool ourselves.
I don’t think that genie is going back in the bottle. I do feel that identifying it in myself and consciously addressing it is an act of weak, self-help though; maybe a fight against total futility.
Some had it pegged from the outset and never bit. People have left it. But most come back. Because as Covid shows us, it’s lonely. Nobody wants to be lonely.
There was a long stretch in which I didn’t ski much, or even care to. I tested wax as a pivotal part of a job I wanted to succeed at. That’s not skiing. I wasn’t using my ability I’d developed with years of intense focus for my own enjoyment as much a work skill. I let my own skiing languish in that regard even though I skied. Maybe it was because I fell short of what I’d set out to do as an athlete? Maybe I was putting personal enjoyment of skiing in the corner for a time out for being a disappointment to me as an achievement? Whatever it was, I lost it to the grind of making it a profession. But now I have it back.
Yesterday, as I shifted weight from leg to leg, over and over, feeling the best place to put my weight, relax my calf, flex my ankle, grab the snow, then pop forwards and glide; clean, orderly, simple thoughts flowed through my head along with all that physical coordination. The sun reflecting off the white and black landscape, the cool spring air coursing through my lungs and the oxygen in that air running through my veins, felt exceptionally valuable at that moment. I kind of stopped to marvel at it, and I rarely stop once I’ve started skiing.
Through this pandemic and this life we’ve tried on for size in Finland, amidst all the stress and uncertainty of working remotely, fewer TV shows to pay the bills, wondering what’s coming and when, I was essentially feeling on that ski, that I have gotten better. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was kind of amazed.
I think I can thank Finland for at least part of it. It was announced yesterday by the BBC that Finland was once again the happiest place to live in the world. I don’t think my personal experience is a coincidence, as brief as it has been.
The visual snapshot of where I was at that moment, stopped on the ski trail, is now in my head forever. It wasn’t exactly an epiphany. It was a realization that, despite all the challenging things going on around me, I’m going to to be ok. I think that’s what happiness is. Because I’m doing better, even if I don’t know or have full control over what’s next at every given moment—even if I don’t know if there’s a sunny patch in the snow on the trail ahead that will challenge my grip wax. In my mind’s eye, I will remember that exact, non-descript spot in Laajavuori, where I stopped, my orange Karhu classic skis in the track stretched out before me, inviting me to continue my journey, with just a little less frenetic thinking. Happy. That, around the corner ahead, as the track disappears to the right, into the unknown terrain, it’s going to be ok. Because I know how to ski.
Forrest Gump’s mom said life is like a box of chocolates. I think it’s like a classic ski In the Finnish forest.